A “Time of Agric”: Rethinking the “Failure” of Agricultural Programs in 1970s Ghana

Recent interest in a “new green revolution” in Africa has revived debate about state intervention in agricultural markets and biotechnology. These debates take for granted that the first wave of green revolution interventions in Africa failed to influence small-scale food farmers. This essay uses oral historical and documentary evidence from Ghana's Northern Region to revisit the evidentiary basis of this assessment. Tracing how the production of aggregate data and changing interpretive frameworks in the 1970s and 1980s allowed policymakers to ignore the experiences of farmers, the essay advocates for the role of micro-historical analysis in assessing Africa's recent agricultural past.